


And The Clock Strikes Nothing

by graspthesanity



Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: GAY GAY GAY, M/M, Transphobia, trans man Axel
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-06-08
Updated: 2020-04-13
Packaged: 2020-04-23 01:20:37
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 15,289
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19140712
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/graspthesanity/pseuds/graspthesanity
Summary: Breaking down from a manic episode Axel meets Roxas properly in a known cruising bathroom at his University.





	1. Chapter 1

My dad’s dad was manic, my dad was manic before me and I am manic, that’s where I decided to end it all. I wanted the noise in my head to stop, I knew what would strike me, and in the end if it wouldn’t be my own knife it would be someone else’s against my throat or my own mental health would drive me wild. I sat on the bathroom stall, banging my head against the door, wondering how come I hadn’t gotten a concussion after all this time and I kept trailing my nails against any exposed area of the skin like in my ripped jeans. Soon enough I felt like I would drop a lighter while walking into university and embrace the fire, anything to just stop what’s in my head. 

I couldn’t take it anymore. I closed my eyes and I couldn’t cry, instead I gave out a small scream, pulling my knees close to my chest, seeing all the scribbles in the bathroom, wondering if they even meant anything. I had written my phone number once in hopes that someone would call me back, but I blamed it on my appearance, as if the numbers could speak of me. I didn’t like how I couldn’t gain much weight and my childhood was written with all sorts of memories which left me paralyzed. In the end I took out a marker and I started crossing out every number I saw, as I wondered if they were left just as desperate as I was in all those empty chat rooms, having bad sex and better masturbation once I would ease my mind after hours and alcohol. 

The door was yanked open and I saw a blonde nearly enter the stall with me, already undoing his zipper, but he gasped, stepping to the side and quickly with shaking hands trying to zip it back up. I looked at him, as if I had been drowning in a bathtub and then someone pulled me out. The fear was there and so was the desire to burn the university down, because it was an escape from home but it was nowhere close to a salvation. 

“Roxas… Why are you here?” I looked at the blonde, who just looked at puzzled as I was. 

“I came to pee… Unlike you.” He said quietly, nodding towards my marker in my hand. His eyes sparkled a bit, but I didn’t want to think if it would be Roxas’ knife against my neck and we just stood there. Well… He could’ve been gay as well. He was in one of my classes, which I frequently skipped, so he just stared at me, trying to grasp the red marks on my arms and legs. He then put his backpack off his shoulders and put it on the floor. I just observed him, not knowing what to say. 

“Chocolate always makes me feel better.” He said in his usual monotone voice, because he was always too shy to show any emotion at all. Then still to my surprise he stretched a half-eaten dark chocolate bar and I took it. 

I crouched next to him and now my hands were trembling, as I unwrapped the sweet delight and a teacher walked in, quickly pissed and left, probably more used to blow jobs in the bathroom than two guys sharing a chocolate bar. I laughed as soon as he left, but Roxas stayed quiet. I wanted to punch him softly on the shoulder, but instead I quietly chewed, knowing that he would leave at some point, maybe when I’d finish. I chewed slowly and Roxas kept looking at the red traces of my nails. I could see that he was holding back from looking sorry at me, but he managed to keep it together, as he watched me eat. He didn’t have a second bar of chocolate, that would’ve been excessive to have, so he just ruffled his hair as I felt myself focus on the taste of it and the walls of the bathroom.

This wasn’t the first time and it was far from the last. I was never hospitalized because according to my doctors I didn’t need it, I wasn’t a danger to my surroundings or to myself… but it felt like a massive “yet” that I would explode and maybe Roxas would be the one watching the sky and seeing all of these pieces of me, as if I were a burst balloon fall into his lap.

I didn’t even know why he was helping me. 

I didn’t like the classes and I couldn’t help but feel that life was slipping away from me. I managed to enter university very late, I needed to get over some trauma and I stayed home, I stayed away from home, I did everything which I didn’t want to do. I didn’t even know why Roxas wouldn’t hang out with his peers now, because he usually would with a tight knit group of friends. I only had memories of old friends who no longer knew where I was, because I wanted no one to know who I had become, a wreck, and even if they had suspected of my sexuality, I didn’t want to be the talk of the town. 

I hated going back home even if I would always end up burning my food and would order out on every opportunity given when living alone. I would try to hide from anyone, knowing that any rumour could spread, I had grown out my hair, I had gotten skinnier and I got the tattoos under my eyes, I just expected and hoped that I was nothing like people expected me to turn out. I could always hear my teachers’ voices that I had such a bright future ahead of me, but I knew that I had wasted it all and it was all my fault. I had gone off the rails. I had lost it all only to come back crawling to my family and ask them to take me back and here I was… Chewing on chocolate given by some younger kid.

I wish I could’ve thanked him properly, but it was like I was frozen, my thoughts of self-harm still leaking into my consciousness and I wanted to hurt him as well, because I couldn’t understand why he would be interested in helping someone like me. IFfhe was a letter I would rip it in pieces, without reading it first. My head started racing again and he stretched his hand, not sure if I were a creature or a human. What was there to me and then I saw that he just took a strand of my hair out of my eyes. I don’t know how it got out with all the gel and hairspray I had been using all this time. 

Then he stood up. 

“Axel… Maybe some air would help you?” He asked, looking around as if there was someone else. I fucking hated statistics, but I could never imagine someone like him to just skip the damn lesson altogether, so I followed him as we passed the classroom and I didn’t care enough to pretend that I wasn’t looking at the students as we passed. Roxas kept his head down, but I didn’t care. I wanted out. We kept walking and it felt as if there was something clicking within me as we exited and headed to the botanical gardens. I wasn’t sure who was leading who. Roxas did pause at the bars but changed his mind at the last second and to the gardens we went. 

I had avoided the garden enough, plunging my hands into my jeans pockets as far as I could, recalling Saïx, which left not only a lump in my throat but a big hole where my heart should’ve been. I used to go with him to the gardens, it took a handful of times before he realized that I wasn’t anything he wanted to hold close to his name so he left me cold and nearly banging on the door of his apartment. I knew that he decided that I wasn’t good enough. I wasn’t that attractive as I’ve been told, and I was a mess. Me and Roxas sat on one of the benches and I recalled how I had fallen asleep on Saïx’s lap and then I got told that he barely moved, in order not to wake me and watch me over like an angel. Afraid to blink as if it might disturb me. 

I couldn’t properly answer to Roxas’ question and I couldn’t feel that air was making me feel better. I felt that I could trace the nails all over my skin again, but Roxas looked at me sadly, nothing close to bewildered, yet there was some sort of understanding in his eyes. 

I heard him gulp and I jerked my head to face him. He blushed lightly from the sudden movement. I sure was weird. I knew that. But it seemed strange to look at him through a rose tinted lenses. I tried not to make much of it. I just looked down and kicked some rocks underneath with my sneakers, closing my eyes to focus on the fucking annoying birds, the fountain in the distance and how giggles would be heard from the first-year students, who had just gotten their capes, probably way too giddy on Harry Potter, because their childhood had been different. 

Somehow, I was thankful that I wasn’t alone and when I opened my eyes, Roxas was looking directly at me, concerned. Maybe he knew what was going on through my mind. I didn’t know so I slouched, and we got a tad closer. I knew that later I wouldn’t remember how we had met, just like in childhood where all the friends would be erased one by one, but I hoped that my heart wouldn’t forget this moment and that I would treasure it. 

“Thank you… I feel better.” I lied. Well, I did feel better and it was a lie that I wish could come true. But I knew that I’d get back home and that the food would be burnt again, calls ignored, bills would come, I would shave again after the morning out of pure paranoia and call home, let myself video call and know that I would be doing it for my younger brother. But at the end of the day it did matter. I couldn’t be myself, I couldn’t even go to pride, even if I’ve lived here for years. I’d slowly change back into home clothes, removing the stretched binder because I couldn’t get myself to buy a new one and wait for it. I knew the contrast of life there and here. I knew so much that hurt. 

Roxas knew I lied, but he gently put his hand on my shoulder and I gave a wry smile, feeling him understand the fabric under my t-shirt. He got closer and I suddenly stood up and looked at him bewildered. 

“I’ll go.”

“Ok.”

“Thanks.”


	2. Chapter 2

It wasn’t long until I saw Roxas, it was among the towering sweaty men of the only gay day in the club. We bumped into each other with our shoulders and I looked at him, holding some other guy’s hand, but his eyes kept focusing on me as I just walked on further and deeper to the drinking section. I stood next to the bar and Roxas went, now without his companion, getting two drinks, that had been his excuse… To his boyfriend? I took a jealous gulp of my drink and looked at the blonde. Since when was I even attracted? Since the fact that I was completely alone, and he just showed some sort of attraction. That’s how sad my life had been. It wasn’t even attraction from his end, it seemed like a mere curiosity and desire to get to know what had been going on. I started attending stats lessons and I could feel him looking at me every time I would raise my head, both in theory classes and practices it’s as if he wished he had signed up with me for more.

We didn’t talk, so we were both gripping our drinks so close to each other and I couldn’t help but wonder about him at night, lying in my own sweat after furiously masturbating and fighting the teeth of dysphoria, knowing that some things won’t just be. I would lean fully out of the windows to the empty streets and just watch nothing pass by, knowing that if I wanted to believe these streets would be haunted.

I wanted Roxas, it was coming to a slow conclusion, where I knew that my loneliness was dictating my life, where I was jumping chapters to find nothing at the end of the book, not even a lousy suicide, because I had no guts. Testosterone shots fuelled my desire to live, as I started losing control of how I was changing. I knew that it was me in the mirror, but I was losing sensitivity, I was losing everything my family had wanted me to lose. Lovers, friends and myself. But I wasn’t going back to that.

I clicked my tongue, not sure what to even say to the blonde, our body language was evident, but there was everything stopping us. You just don’t stick your hand in the lion’s mouth, even if it’s not your head. Any injury would affect you. Roxas smirked and got a bit closer, his sea blue eyes swishing in the pools of alcohol and adrenaline running through my body. I could almost taste him, I could almost feel his breath on me even if he were so far away, even if I hadn’t known him.

I put my cup between my teeth, checking for my phone, as it had vibrated and thus the moment was lost only for Roxas’ grabby hands to take the drink away from me.

Nobody will ever love you, Axel.

A louder student bumped into the Roxas, causing the black drink to spill on the wooden floor, and startling me. I looked up and saw blue, long blue hair, that was my tarot card.

My fate, my danger, my destiny. I was going to die alone. No one wanted a gay trans man. Roxas cursed and apologized very loudly, probably for the entire club to hear, as my   
heart tightened and he watched the gaze until its trail ended on Saïx.

That was that.

Roxas put his hand upon mine, gave it a squeeze and I looked at him, before he got called and left, quickly ordering the same spilt rum and coke.

If I could I would write stories on these walls of my small apartment, as I knew I’d be a disappointment. Instead I took paintings and wrote on them, on boards, photos, post cards of my pain, which would never pass. I would draw on my veins in the winter to not self-harm. I wouldn’t open to my psychologist, but he would read me, as my blood test results would’ve been discussed elsewhere.

Everyone at the clinic seemed to beg for me to find friends, but I couldn’t. Semesters came and went, winters rose and died in my mind even if I was still on my second with some guys choosing to hook up with me on Grindr, the only solace as they would pound me, push my head back with their rough hands and I would feel them pump me good, good, good. Sometimes I would go down and finger them, terrified of topping for now. I’ve topped, sometimes I would’ve. But at least I had sex, I had guys who wanted to sleep with me, who said that they were curious to see me naked and I would let them unwrap me and make me have a strong orgasm at the end of the day.

I rode, I loved and they left. It was simple. My life was painful, my life was cliché, I was self-aware, so I traced my skin until the red marks would make chains on my physical form and match my hair. I wouldn’t cry anymore. I washed my hair, I dyed it and I loved Roxas back and then. I thought about him as I would look at the old clock, knowing that people barely had proper alarm clocks, unless I would wake up at the antique’s owner’s room to fuck. I would browse through all the things and hear kids giggle about what the difference between a floppy disc and a VHS was. I was getting old.

I was getting a goddamn wrinkle on my forehead. It stretched as if I could fish it out, botox considered and ignored. Too many operations to see ahead, anyway.   
I sat on the bathroom again, wondering how long it would take me to start heroin, but I hated the frat houses, the sororities and anyone knowing outside of Grindr, so that was it. I wouldn’t become a junkie. Tragic. I laughed at my own joke, quietly, in the same bathroom where Roxas approached me and then looked up to see  
his number and Instagram.

Convincing myself to check his Instagram was easy enough, but arranging a hook up was different, it meant finding the matching Grindr account with his photo.

He was cheating.

It took him 3 days to reply, wondering if he was able to turn it all to sleaze. I hosted for one of those rare times and didn’t care about the condom, I had forgotten about it and I had to use the IUD for something, right? But I was getting ahead of myself, I had texted him that I was trans and how much I wanted him to slide his rock hard cock in, despite that he was younger and I preferred older guys. He took it like a champ, just like I took him.

I screamed once he entered.

We agreed to try the fantasy where he would walk in and fuck me, I couldn’t dare myself to face him, so there I was ass up and he went inside me, inside my front hole and fucked me, oh, he fucked me good.

He spoke. He was a dirty talker. Cheating, fuck, that thing turned him on and then he licked me after he came just to taste us both and that’s when we turned around and faced each other, both our heads a mess. What was new?

Isn’t this how you fall in love? Isn’t this how you unwrap the gift and see, how you say the words and we fucked again. Now facing each other, he fondled my chest with my allowance and traced kisses all over my body with a flustered face. We barely knew each other, but the image of each other, with his face between my legs was enough for us to know each other, to arch each other’s back and appreciate each other’s imagery in the head.

I came.

Hard.

Again and again, he wouldn’t let me go and he’d keep going, fucking, fingering, licking, sucking and fucking, cum on my face, chest, body, he wouldn’t stop and I’d ride him so hard and it wasn’t enough even when we collapsed on the floor of my corridor, when he had told me an hour ago he had to leave. The thing that I’ve learned about myself and other guys was that were many things which made sense in the moment but once I had to explain how interactions now worked between gay men, I wouldn’t understand how we had gone such a far way from considering every kiss on the cheek an achievement to only being naked only in a post-coital state of pillow talk. Then you’d talk if the sex were good, you’d hold from falling asleep if someone is cheating, or if there’s somewhere to go. But sex is so crucial to open up and is this how we age?

Is this how we fade?

We just kept looking at each other, I knew he had Hayner, so he left after a while and I just stood naked in the corridor, cum leaking out of me still and I had to jump in the shower because I was a bit too messy. Afterwards I had decided to go out for a small eating out dinner by myself, it was crowded at the tapas place but I didn’t care. I could make all the convos out into a huge man who was shouting as I drank my beer in peace and I couldn’t help but let my mind idle out, I didn’t want to think much of Roxas. I wanted to be alone. But I could still feel his touch and his fingers, I knew that he would linger.

I vowed to hold myself from texting until tomorrow. But I didn’t, on my third beer, I took out my phone.

‘Hey, how are you?’

I hoped that Hayner wasn’t the type of boyfriend who would check his phone, but then cheaters were cautious, and I could see that in Roxas as well. It wasn’t the first time I was in the winning favour of sex when it came between someone else’s choice and I never pushed to be a boyfriend either. It wasn’t because of dysphoria, that demon bugged me in other aspects of my life.

I got an answer rather fast and we chatted idly, as I kept eating, not realizing how hungry I had gotten and not caring about the bill for once, I was in that stage where I was hungry and losing weight with T somehow, which didn’t make much sense.

I wanted to see Roxas again, but I didn’t tell him that and I would’ve jerked off again if my insides weren’t all burning and it was hard to sit from all that damn fucking, not to mention I could still taste Roxas if I tried hard enough in my mouth. I put my head on the table, letting the noise swallow me whole and letting the night greet the day, before taking over with the hem of it’s fabric, pulling it over, suffocating, only leaving holes for the stars to shine and for the day to breathe through. I lifted my head, paid and left. I took the long walk home, wondering where did Roxas live, having a hunch we’d screw there too.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you!


	3. Chapter 3

I don’t want the icon of a gay man to be fit or cis. I feel like we’ve outgrown the image we all get. Gay men are diverse and we grow, learn and have sex to a new uncontrolled amount. I tell Roxas that as he goes into my apartment again for the sole purpose of sex. I had gotten nervous that it was purely because I was trans and it was all new, but it wasn’t. He seemed attracted to me to some extent he didn’t want to speak of.

I want us both-

We all represent the modern man attracted to other men. We’re diverse.

It’s strange to be on the timeline where we had actually slept with each other. I would be lying if I said that I didn’t get the urge to call the numbers scribbled or carved into the doors of the university bathroom stalls, where Roxas had found me. It was tough being myself, but then it is for everyone because we never get to choose who to be, we just get dealt with a shit card and must make the best of it until we die. If this a comfortable time to live in, what was it really like back then with all the melancholy and no games to play on mobile to calm down? What about all the rape and the wars? What about all the lax rules which would’ve ended me up dead? What about when it was okay but the diseases wouldn’t allow people to age? I felt manic again and I wanted sex all over again and I knew that even if I sexted Roxas, it wouldn’t be enough.

I felt like nearly banging my head against the door, I needed to fulfil some requests. Being a trans guy was handy in that aspect, sex work and doing photos wasn’t easy to come by, but it was addictive. No one talked about that side. There were people who made a really good living out of it, we were like the dark coin of sexual media, with no one to touch and photos taken on our terms. I had sold a few and it became like some sort of addictive game. I made sure to sell plenty to the US and jump accounts, withdrawing as if that would change anything, but that’s because I just wished that I was more web savvy. I didn’t actually get paid for sex yet, even though I had been offered. I just felt horny, so I beat off to some porn, got photos of my dripping hole to post later and I wondered… was this a world where we were all whores? Roxas was cheating and here I was, revealing myself layer after layer, a day, a new worry. I was a trans guy who wanted to sell his body for other’s entertainment because it made me feel good. It was how I accepted my body. Selling those photos…

I saw that I was seen as a guy, even by the scummiest of all. They still saw me as a guy and I would probe them, allow them to just jerk off endlessly to my content and that made me happy. I started it when I was worried about finances and it stayed that way. It was a small sum, a placebo pill, compared to the money the others made, but I made it work somehow.

I wondered what would Roxas think if he would stumble across it, but then we had fucked already. I knew that if you liked someone enough you’d wank to the same photos again.

Was I one of those for Roxas? Would he jerk off to me? Because I would’ve jerked off to him any day.

I took out a dildo and rode it, feeling it stretch my front hole good, my red hair in my face, my hand sore from all the action but my hole was hungry and specifically for cum.

Something I seemed to be riding with fear, but I would just get tested, because I loved cum too much. Roxas was cheating and indeed, I wasn’t confident in all his partners, but

damn, he was too hot.

In the end, I sent him a more edited photo, which made me feel Roxas’ slight grin, as he was probably with his boyfriend. He came over and told me to go on my knees to suck him off, as he fucked my mouth harshly, making me gag and nearly throw up from his long cock touching the back of my throat, but he kept going and going. He needed me now and even if he were to pay, I’d take it, anything. Hell, I’d pay. I wanted him so bad.

“Enough child’s play.” And he fucked me against a wall, it was strange that we barely talked and how sudden our relationship got sexual.

We finished and were on the floor of the corridor again.

“Is sex a way to avoid conversation?” I asked him, very carefully, as I turned my head towards him.

“Yeah.” He swallowed and looked up at the ceiling.

Why was cheating so fascinating to me? I had read numerous stories and I knew that if I were to start a relationship, I’d still want sex on the side, probably not cheating, because I was a loudmouth and I’d want my boyfriend on the action too, but cheaters turned me on horrendously, maybe there was some rotten Freudian explanation for it, since that was what my parents divorced for. I didn’t really know.

“My parents divorced.” Roxas turned his blonde head towards me, eyes blue and filled with curiosity. “Because they cheated on each other. Both were polyamorous if you ask me…”

Roxas gave a small laugh.

“A human is hard to understand with the heart being a labyrinth of its own confusion, Axel.”

“You’re fucking without Hayner knowing. I don’t think that’s hard enough to guess and understand.”

“Maybe.” And he stretched to get his jeans and lit a cigarette, the tobacco doing nothing by the looks of it besides turning my apartment into an ashtray I’d regret over the next few days. It’s not that we didn’t meet on the days when we would just see each other in statistics, we would text sporadically and sometimes Roxas’ text would end with… ‘Shit, Hayner’s here’. But I wondered if he was with him for a reason or the reason was no reason at all. I never understood the people who cheated, but I was the one who slept with them. The more I’d hear the stories whether through texting or verbal, the less I understood. I missed Roxas. I still kept my online clients and I finally settled on dying my hair a pure red along with the first two tattoos. T kept changing my body in ways I found acceptable, but shaving was hard because the hair was taking a while to grow back, so I still looked sharper shaved. Of course some dysphoria came with such things, but I never let it take the best of my judgement unless I had a heavy mood swing towards depression.

It was strange that I didn’t have massive swings since I had met Roxas a few weeks ago.

I wanted to date him, I realized one time I was at a mall alone. It was easier to fuck than to make friends and he was with the rest of his friend group, finger laced through Hayner’s like a corset, tight, and painful to see. Sometimes when life would settle or would make some sense I felt like I was the world’s worst unreliable narrator. But the weekends were the worst to survive, because when it came to the lovebirds which had one bird drilling another on the side, they were always together.

I still ate ice cream alone and Roxas managed to give a small wave in the mall, which let both my shoulders relax and Hayner tense up.

When I came back home, my phone was vibrating all the time and I couldn’t pinpoint who the hell was horny at this time and eventually I found it to be Roxas, whose name I couldn’t add emojis to or anything of the sorts. I had wanted to hide it like a few clients, but then I figured that I could at least have his name written properly on my phone.

‘Hayner… He asked why I knew you. He said you’re hot and since we’re taking stats together…’

He took pauses in writing as I stood in my kitchen, holding tightly one bag of the groceries.

‘He said he never had been with a trans guy before. Well, he used another word, which I corrected anyway… How much would you charge for an actual threesome?’

I blinked at the words on my phone.

‘Axel… I know you charge people. Gotta make this transparent… I can’t lose the love of my life because sex isn’t as good as it used to be… Sorry, if you thought of something else.’

I gripped my grocery bag stronger.

‘Don’t flatter yourself. I know what sex and love are.’

What is love?

I did accept the offer and made sure to hike up the price as much I could, because it was a first fucking in real life, I asked a few people who I knew online who met people privately as well and I knew that my boy pussy was a goldmine if I wanted it to be. That was the wording Hayner wanted, but I managed to detach myself. Somewhere in the back of my head, I couldn’t help but wonder how come I managed to detach myself from crude words thrown at myself? Was it because I didn’t care or because they hurt too much, yet made no sense to me now? I knew that everyone had different stages of their transition, but I was comfortable now. I ate an ice cream before coming in and hadn’t bought condoms just like Roxas had asked. Apparently, it was Hayner’s birthday but I didn’t bother to give him any other gifts than my body.

I was expecting more ignorant questions, but once Hayner opened the door, I was greeted into an apartment, messy just like my own, with a new vacuum cleaner seen, as if it had only been used once. I took the courtesy of walking in, Hayner shaking lightly from anxiety and excitement. The fella already had a boner in his pants and he stuck his tongue down my throat, which left Roxas a bit speechless as I kept my own eyes open, watching Roxas approach us quietly.

“Say… why don’t you greet me that way, Hayner?” Roxas smirked and slapped him on the ass before I finally saw the two boyfriends make out. Hayner looked like he had plenty of rude questions to ask me or maybe I was just very irritated at his existence. Being called a tranny behind my back wasn’t the greatest thing to write home about either.

I thought that he’d see me and Roxas and flee, but instead as soon as I stepped to kiss Roxas, Hayner stood between us.

“You’re here to take loads, not kisses.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've actually been writing this rather fast and I'm many chapters ahead and etc. I really enjoy this story, hope you do too! I've been in a rough mental health spot, so thank you for all of your support!


	4. Chapter 4

_Why do you leave my feeling dormant?_   
_Why is it so that when I see you that’s when my heart wants to flee is it all?_   
_Go to you for once?_   
_Why does his touch feel cold?_   
_Why is there nothing I can do?_   
_Why am I in love with an image, ignoring the reality?_

He was dead jealous.

Hayner broke our kiss, which lasted a long while and I could hear Roxas’ voice ringing in my ears, as if he had written words in the sky, among the stars and the clouds for me to see.

“Get out.” Something clicked within Roxas’ boyfriend, which caused us both to break the kiss, a string of saliva connecting us until I stepped back.

“Get out!” He screeched and pushed me out. And there I was staring at their closed door, watching people go up and down the stairs as I’d hear muffled screaming about how Hayner knew, knew, knew. That a beloved knows when the rose starts to wither entirely, until there’s nothing left but the stem to burn with a mere lighter. Eventually I left, Roxas wasn’t heading out and neither either of them were going to stop screaming at the other.

Was I a mere image? Roxas barely knew me… What if I was also in love with the mere image? Was it worth to throw everything away just for some sex? Just because Roxas couldn’t look at his partner they way he used to? The way he would back when sex was love making?

In the end I walked on, I walked past many of the labyrinth streets, trying to calm myself down, because I was selfish, I wanted a taken boyfriend for myself. I wanted to try everything with Roxas, not just sex, but the whole ordeal. I didn’t know where it would lead me and what was the point, when Roxas and Hayner had known each other all their lives. I wasn’t a fetish to Roxas, I wasn’t something to brag home about either and it started to rain. I kept walking until I came back home and opened the window, I was too low to actually do damage to myself if I flung myself out of a window, a lover, if Hayner had done the same thing, from the same floor, his damage would’ve been fatal on his heart, his heart would’ve broken earlier as me and Roxas would lean out of said window, holding hands and looking upon him, the love long lost.

I knew that it would take a while for Roxas to text or call me, so I waited and waited. Stats lesson rolled in and Hayner pushed past me, but there was no Roxas in sight today. Maybe he needed some time off, maybe he was moving his things out of Hayner’s appartemnt. I felt as if all of Roxas’ younger, short gang was staring at me, wondering how could he had chosen some tranny like me out of all people? But he had and that’s what left them baffled, even if it were only for a few times for the rest of Roxas’ left, he still rolled the dice, he still walked in and we still made love.

I hurried out of the class to get some ice cream, once the class was over, knowing that I’d still miss this hell when exams would roll in, even if I understood close to nothing, but then I just had a lot on my mind, was what I would get told.

I got back home and jerked off, didn’t even bother to take new photos, knowing that I had enough to sell if need be and that had been my day, laying in bed clothed later until stars were drawn upon my eyes.

Roxas banged on my door the next day and I opened it, to see him relaxed as ever.

“Wanna fuck?” Nothing seemed to be off and I just let him in, without saying much and he nodded. “Hayner probably knows where I left to… But I don’t care.”  

Why did we play with the feelings of those who loved us? To those we loved dearly? I was no stranger to cheating and adultery, so I just spread my legs wider and was on fours when Roxas required me to. I did everything he had told me that day, like a good boy, but that was nothing new because I had wanted it, but it was different, there was no mild curiosity in each other’s body, just the desire to fuck it away. I came before Roxas did and he kept going and going, to the point that I was thinking he didn’t have it in him.

He screamed out and collapsed over me, when he came, his face all red he pulled me closer, this time it was different, his own feelings were at stake.

Why did we hurt those who loved us? I didn’t want to answer the question when it came to myself, as we laid in quiet, Roxas digging his head into my hair, thinking of Hayner as I was left thinking of family, long lost friends who I had left behind to live for myself. But that was then. This was now. I sat up a bit, causing Roxas to shift and look at me with teary eyes.

I didn’t know what he was expecting, since we were both guilty, but I still kissed him softly, not asking anything since I knew that it would be outside of my line to ask and judge someone else’s relationship when I had given the gun to shoot on the stage. It felt like summer break all of a sudden, or at least the temperature did, and we started kissing as if it were the first time of our lives, like lone lovers, hungry to explore the other’s body. Roxas pulled me even closer and I didn’t know why I I was in such a deep cycle.

I shouldn’t fall in love with Roxas. I shouldn’t even think of him that way, I’ve been hurt too many times, I should be focusing on clients which help me pay the bills and I knew that I was with the worst luck anyone could muster when it came to parental help, so I had to make it with no one else on the receiving end of the call from family blood. It felt as if we were the only ones in the moment, like we were a lake with a single ripple growing stronger and we had sex again, less animalistic, more desirable… As if he wanted to tell me something, but I didn’t want to listen. I had my bills to pay and he had his Hayner to return to, everything else other than sex was out of the question. I didn’t even properly know who this Hayner fella was and what he was capable of, even if it meant a mere punch to the face that was something I wasn’t interested in, I didn’t want to fill in a transphobia report or even expose my trans status, just because.

I got manic as soon as he left, because I wasn’t able to get him out of my mind, so I ended up screaming into a pillow, making sure that no one would hear it besides my own agony. I knew that I was falling in love with an image, I hadn’t even been opening Grindr and I dreamt of going alone to some big event with masks, only mine was off and I kept trying to find him, even if I started lifting the masks and seeing people. Even when I had a mask on, I couldn’t find him.

Then I saw him at Pride with Hayner, but he didn’t even look my way, just to fuck me harder into the wall the next time we met. I was alone and in love, by this time I was aware of it as anger was boiling my blood. I was alone at Pride, not even my shades could hide me. I then switched positions and threw him on the ground, not even bothering that he could’ve been getting a bruise for tomorrow and I started riding him like there’s no tomorrow.

An image of us meeting in one of the labyrinth streets.

Don’t all old cities have that? I remember I went to the same spot back just to sit on one of the stairs which led up to my own place and stared at the graffiti. I searched my phone, while my hands were shaking, but looks like I deleted the photo, just like the love I had held for Roxas should’ve gone. This was going nowhere.

I couldn’t even string sentences together. I couldn’t listen to music to calm down. The mid-terms were coming up and I kicked a toilet in the cruising bathroom, as soon as the grade for stats was up. I cursed at my aching foot, but didn’t bother, feeling awful that Roxas had even approached me.

What the fuck was that graffiti about? It was about love… But what did it say?

Did it matter?

Did it matter when only one of the parties was in love?

I could’ve gone to his house and confessed, even put my foot in the door, no matter how much Hayner would’ve screamed, we were all so hysterical, weren’t we?

I kept kicking things for pretty much a week and avoided Roxas. I didn’t want him to see me in this state and he didn’t bother until one day came and he checked up on me. He stepped over all the take away boxes that had attempted to take over my apartment and we were holding each other in an embrace.

“I love you.” I couldn’t even whisper, I was shaking all over.

“You can’t.”

I nodded, but I was too manic to cry. I grabbed his face.

I wanted him gone now, I wanted to sleep with more men, I wanted to earn more money to feel miserable, not manic, I wanted to die. I wanted to die. I wanted to die. I kept rethinking that over and over as we kissed.

He kept making me cum and cum, but the mania didn’t leave. But neither did he- He’d go at it again, not knowing better.

When it was time to leave, he stopped at the door and looked at me for a very long while and for the first time, we didn’t kiss goodbye. That somehow meant something. I threw a pillow against the wall and loved again.

Roxas failed the subject as well, so now we had the silver lining of an excuse to meet up and fuck raw, bare.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for taking long to update, I've been having a rough time, but thank you so much for your support!


	5. Chapter 5

My eyes would get bleaker, and I recalled how my mother’s green eyes started going bleaker with age. Then I started getting wrinkles, something she would’ve blamed on testosterone and everything to go with it. I didn’t want to age, I didn’t want to get old, knowing that so much of my life had been taken away from me. I just wanted to live somehow, even if I knew that my end would be near if I were to believe in some teachings, that I would simply trip on one of the huge stairs of the staircase and that would be it. Just like in that story they told us during one of the many orientations, for us to simply take photos of a tragedy which happened who knows how many dozens of years ago. I still walked the stairs nearly every day and I wondered after Roxas had left if I could sell my body even further or if I should’ve just continued sleeping around with the guys of our town, so that the truth about me being a trans guy would spread like the plague. It wasn’t easy being stealth, but I needed to be protected and have my needs met at the same time.

I was exhausted and changing everything in life was awful.

I would wake up bad.

I would wake up good.

Days would pass as I would trace my nails on the ceiling and the stars which I wanted to hang so badly. I knew that I had confessed, and I laid on the floor, watching nothing and wondering what had I gotten myself into. I couldn’t help but wonder if I could trim my life even shorter. I wondered if many people just wanted to shorten it because of society and the pain, rather than just end it all? And if so, how many were there of us? My mood would change like a kaleidoscope and I would get off old meds and start new ones, no hallucinations to blame, but instead I could feel myself get worse with every incoming day because of my own misery, as I had briefly spoken to people on the phone, online and live. There seemed like there was nothing I could fucking do.

I couldn’t even strip myself to the bone.

I couldn’t give up, no matter how high I’d climb on the buildings in my dreams, how many roofs I’ve been on, I never had the courage to end it all and today was no different, I just wanted Roxas.

I wanted nothing else.

How many lovers have we lost? Where do they all go?

My exhaustion was playing tricks on me. I couldn’t even fathom that I had even slept with Roxas and had the weird run-in with his boyfriend. Roxas stayed away in public, but every now and then we would meet up just to fuck, he would try out his luck by knocking on my door, making sure that there was no evidence on the phone. We didn’t talk, we just fucked like animals. Roxas wanting nothing of my feelings now.

I woke up one day on the floor, Roxas besides me, curled into a ball and we had both been naked and without thinking much I stretched out my hand. We hadn’t talked at all and I even wondered why he had decided to stay, when there was Hayner. I didn’t even notice that well how roughly he handled me before. It was sex alright, but he kept pounding me rough and I knew that all this fucking without a condom would give me a unpleasantry in a way or another. I didn’t know what to do, because my stomach started rumbling in the small student apartment and Roxas was snoring on the entrance rug. He made his way there with little sleep we had gotten, as I had known how rough yesterday was.

I made both of us some toast and cereal, knowing that we needed energy. Sometimes I didn’t even recall how I had been during the manic episode, as if it was some full blown-on psychosis. I hadn’t updated any of my social medias either, as I refreshed my phone to see some loss of income which was totally ridiculous on my part, as there could’ve been odd requests, but no one really inquired me, even to spread my legs out for the camera on a tripod.

I felt relieved. I knew that I’d always be manic and that my deepest desires, where like a strong current controlling the river and I wanted to delete everything here and there, but I couldn’t. I wasn’t some Cinderella. I softly poked Roxas’ leg with my own foot so that he’d wake up, as he turned around on the said rug, poking his face against the door. Eventually he sat up, ruffling his hair.

“Axel?” He called out to me, as if I wasn’t in front of me and I just walked closer to him, stretching my skinny arm to him and he grabbed it, standing up. We went to the small table which was really a few missteps and Roxas sat down, quietly, thanking me and looking at me with his lost blue eyes, as if there was some innocence left to him when all we did was fuck numerous times. Now it’s been such a long while that I wouldn’t even be able to remember how I had met him during stats class to begin with, or how summer had rolled in.

The first days of summer were a bore, until we would be able to understand what was summer really hiding behind it’s neon sign. But this would be the calmest summer in a while, since me and the family had decided our distance and money was an issue enough not to travel, so I’d have to mellow in the city, just hanging out.

I didn’t notice how I started mumbling about summer plans to Roxas and he just agreed, that Hayner had left last night.

He wasn’t there to see him leave and I felt my stomach drop. He’d deal with Hayner in autumn. We had that retake, but that was still under the flag of summer. I didn’t hold and pushed my chair closer to Roxas, as we sat there on the wooden chair covered in dried up sticky fluids and I kissed Roxas. I held the kiss until he kissed back bewildered, his hair wild and he kissed me again. I wish I could trust myself and my memories again. But for now I had a kiss with Roxas.

It felt strange to be hostage to this one city, both of us to be hostage.

It’s like we both didn’t want to be here, because of the similarity of the previous day to another. We could grab a train to the beach and throw water at one another, but I wouldn’t be able to take off my shirt and binder and Roxas knew that.

It felt so strange to be together, Roxas had decided to spend more time with me. It was when my mania was slowly drawing down, stopped drawing circles and circles on the walls frantically that I let myself stop gripping my guard, my steering wheel. I wondered what it was that I was feeling for Roxas after fucking intensely for so long. We were still fucking roughly every day and the marks on each other more far more graphic and evident.

“I got asked by a friend if I got a new boyfriend. I had to tell Pence, that he’d get himself a new boyfriend as well. That he shouldn’t worry. He wallowed that here I was in a university city, in summer and I managed to find a boyfriend already…” He tapped his fingers against the beer glass. I had stocked up on beer yesterday. “When I had just entered troubled waters with another.”

Roxas cleared his throat.

“But isn’t that the essence of homosexuality?” I looked up. “We all have lovers, loves which stretch a lifetime with brighter colours than anyone can imagine, just because we get the spice of playing a game of chess before we can strip comfortably in front of the other to make love after having sex so many times.”

I watched him. I’ve heard too many stories from the men that I sent photos of myself naked too, something I held dear and of course the guys that I had slept with and now there was Roxas.

I took Roxas’ hand and we kissed again. There was something to us kissing over and over and over. I couldn’t feel the mania anymore, but I knew that our love had its turmoil ahead and not just in the name of Hayner, but it simply because nothing was easy. Relationships were tough. I could barely crawl from one to another and I knew that under the summer sun nothing would really happen, which we wouldn’t cultivate ourselves and harvest closer to the end of August.

The melancholy of sex wasn’t washing off because we couldn’t stop, and I wondered by this time if perhaps Roxas was just someone who just like me got checked regularly despite the uncomfortable procedure. I asked him one night and he said that he hadn’t been checked for four months because he was only sleeping with me and Hayner, that it was a closed circle.

Then he looked at the lower half of my body and didn’t say much. He didn’t want to venture and I left it at such. I knew how reckless I was being, but then after years of testosterone I didn’t see the possibility and I knew that I should’ve done something, but it was getting to me. It was pissing me off that I had to when barely any other men had to do it for that specific reason. I would just abort it, without a second thought. I knew that.

It’s strange how strong you can be on a stance which will result in a much stronger way later.

Roxas showed up with a backpack one day and then we started sleeping together and counting the stars before we’d fall asleep, not even bothering to check the e-mails with anything that could potentially bother us and soon enough we stopped charging our phones, grabbing a train and going to the beach, sticking our heads out of the windows and laughing at the breeze and the shore stretching, welcoming, loving.

We both laughed and kissed, as if we were old lovers, red laces intertwined for some long while.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for taking long to update, I've been writing a lot lately so there's going to be new chapters for a lot of stories.


	6. Chapter 6

Summer was lazy. I knew that there was nothing binding between us besides sex and once Hayner would be back, Roxas would be pulled by a mere string and he’d be there. I’d be left alone and I knew that he would stay here as long as possible clawing his desires here in these four walls.

“Why don’t you go back to yours?”

“I have construction workers there building sandwiches and destroying the walls before doing new ones. I don’t want to go home either” was what made sense of Roxas’ words in my mind. It was like mania became a fucking massive drug trip, which made no sense because I had never tried drugs, scared that somehow they would keep me off testosterone if I said that I would see the leaves move in waves as I would walk in rhythm of the music, that I would convulse in ways that some druggie did.

I kissed him.

He wasn’t my drug, he begun to turn into the adrenaline in my blood. Love was some deep connection deep within us, but I accepted that he wouldn’t feel the same way. I was woken up one night by the lack of stars in the sky, all of them had fallen and Roxas was laying on the bed diagonally and that’s when I knew that I loved him.

I loved every inch of his blonde hair, his pale skin and how many scars he had from skateboarding as a teenager, something I never attempted because I was tall and clumsy, sometimes I felt as if there was nothing pretty about me, not in the feminine way, but in the way that nothing was noteworthy. I just had a mess of red hair which would wear off if I didn’t take care of it properly, my hands shook violently, and I knew that nothing made sense in this life. There was no point, but the violent love for Roxas kept me going. I was like a hungry animal, wanting more and more of him, clawing his back as he’d enter me, it would be a repetition of yesterday but he wouldn’t get sick of it.

He did call his friends back north from the house phone, not even bothering to charge his mobile anymore. It was as if we were in a retreat. Soon enough Roxas lost his phone somewhere in my small apartment and so did I. But we put the stars up again and that’s when knots were made out of my vocal cords and Roxas stared at me, shirtless in his baggy pants, eyes blue like the sky we were missing, the one which crossed the oceans.

“I love you.” I said. It’s been weeks, a month, how many? Time was our fugitive and Roxas looked up to hang a star. He smiled weakly, like a mixture of all the lovers I’ll ever have, like a black made of all the colours already mixed in the palette.

“You know everything… I don’t think certain things have to be spelled out, Axel.”

“But I want to hear it.” And he pressed a star against my nose.

“I love you.” My heart raced and I wanted to vomit, not being able to look at him, as my ears started ringing, my eyes swelling up for a love that was dated. We kissed, as the stars fell apart anyway.

I thought of all the lovers, all of them which had ever uttered words, legs tangled, smoke apart, cock in, cock out, post-coital, shaking limbs, crooked mouths, crooked laughter, what had happened to all those times when I had exposed what was best for me at the time? When time stood still for the love which would move onwards to someone else? I couldn’t grasp it all.

We fell down on the bed and made out for a very long time, the summer heat covering us in sweat as we made love again and again, as we couldn’t stop, we were like a record, allowing the sun to control our emotions, until our fingers couldn’t grasp anything and fluids were no longer exchanged but between all our bodies and soaking the bed sheets beneath us.

How many men had told me that they wanted to be with me? What had happened to them? What would be written in for Roxas?

Roxas didn’t bother to go north, no matter how many times his parents called, and I could hear it in their accent. I wondered how they would react to another boyfriend who wasn’t someone who they knew and who wasn’t convenient like me. I wondered about the ride up north, since I wasn’t from these parts. I told him that he could go for at least one day, but instead he stayed and that night we even managed to suck each other off behind the university walls, a new thrill grasping us both like horny teenagers and I couldn’t help but wonder what was going on between us.

The next day we snuck into the cruising bathroom with no closing doors and he fucked me there senseless. I started wondering if our sex was something we weren’t saying, when we looked at each other, but there was nothing I hadn’t told him, besides my fear of the school year starting and him going back to Hayner, but it wasn’t like it was a first for me, I knew men who would lie behind someone’s back just to taste me once and that would be it. But once a cheater always a cheater and they would come back, put the money sometimes or transfer and leave. What else had I wanted?

I felt like I was someone who would sabotage everything, but somehow I would wake up happy. I couldn’t take more photos in the bathroom, for those who were paying, but people still paid for whatever I provided so I just left it at that. Not knowing how to bring it up to Roxas who came from a loving family and who didn’t have a money gap and had to think about things others shouldn’t. He started paying for the groceries once he noticed that I started thinning our meals, without saying much and then eventually we started splitting.

We would talk, but soon it felt very surfaced, because I didn’t want to talk of my family, as he would slowly thread about his and the childhood, which I didn’t have. I started finding peace in things that were gonna die with me, letting them just be inside me, but now I had Roxas. Should I take them out too, for him to see?

I didn’t know what to do with my newfound love. I felt like I should have done something every day, but instead we would spend days inside, outside, sometimes in a peaceful quiet, which Roxas noted that wouldn’t happen with Hayner and I couldn’t help but keep looking at him, as if some tragedy was meant to occur. Of course summer would end, Hayner would come back. Of course a cis guy would be better than a trans guy, even if Roxas knew his way entirely around my body, held my hands when dysphoria got too severe and he would listen. I didn’t dare question what would happen once summer would end, so I tried pushing us more to do things, but then I would crash with depression as the students started leaking into the city, slowly, the food court would fill up and it no longer resembled a ghost town. It was harder to have sex outside if we felt like it and it felt like there was a cruising queue for every bathroom in the city.

Not that we didn’t have a bed at home, but it just started giving me anxiety, that people were coming back and my own parents started calling me and I had to pick up once, because Roxas had accidentally nudged it with his foot, to which he kept apologizing for weeks.

I never expected anything other than dry conversations. As I talked, I whispered to Roxas that I needed to go to the beach now, as if they could see through a plain phone call, that I was packing but I made enough noise. They asked nothing of what I would wear, but they would keep talking surprisingly, telling me to call the others and I felt strange. I knew they wanted nothing and their support was non-existent. I hated calls like these. I hated the façade they would put, as if they would actually do something, other than just pretend that I was a relative. In the end, I felt exhausted and I nearly cried while packing the rest silently, Roxas trying to get me to speak.

“Mind your own business! You don’t know! You don’t know!” I yelled at him and started crying. Roxas just put his hands in the air and watched me search for clean towels with shaking hands. He tried to soothe me, but I couldn’t seem to make sense of anything. Instead I kept crying in his lap and I felt like nothing had changed, that I had cried in many men’s laps and that they would just change, one after another, because no one wanted a trans boyfriend, because at the end of the day… But I couldn’t help but become furious at my own thoughts, I was neurotic, I was ill, I was bipolar. I didn’t know why I was worse than Hayner. Sure, I couldn’t top the way he could… But was that really all there was to a relationship? A way to have sex? Was that it? Why was a taboo so widely discussed now?

We went to the beach and that’s when Roxas started talking. I couldn’t help but stare at him nearly wide eyed, because it was quite a subject which even I wouldn’t dare speak in public, yet, there he was.

“I stay with Hayner because he was the only boyfriend they would approve of.” He slowly gulped, not even making sure that there would be anyone who knew either of us on the train, even if I knew that it wasn’t possible. Everyone Roxas knew was outside of the city. “Because they knew him since birth. That’s it. Otherwise they’d throw a fuss over me being gay. I know it.”

He chewed on his lip.

“But do I love him?” He shrugged, looked out of the window and ruffled his hair. “Is convenience love?”


	7. Chapter 7

The seesaw swings down with a sudden thud, a halt and I see no one else on the other side, holding the balance and I can feel myself start choking on nothing.

I was drowning in my dreams, the days now left can be counted on one hand and whenever I wake up I know that soon Roxas won’t be there. He won’t be paying his part of the bill, he won’t be risking it all, because who would choose me? He won’t even get drunk with me now, he’ll just be a part of any other good hook up I’ve ever had, just to check my Instagram stories and be left at that and that’s it.

My body shakes and twists in ugly turns from the mere thought and I start waking up in tears, Roxas barely turning around, his own thoughts becoming a prison. We barely talk the last few days and they seem to be stretching forever, it feels like a never-ending nightmare where we both somehow still hold each other’s hand while walking through some dark labyrinth. I want to scream, I keep falling off the bed, screaming for a week now until one night I don’t see Roxas by my side anymore, I think at first, but he’s just in the bathroom and neither of us have the guts to confront the comfortable summer we’ve had, the love we’ve managed to entangle ourselves into. Roxas stopped saying anything. We just walk, as the streets fill up and now Roxas has people to say hi to and my Grindr grid starts to fill up with faces I know and which pay. We both started checking, as if knowing that nothing lasts forever.

We go on one of the last days to the beach and I can’t take off my binder under the shirt, but somehow I feel peace even if Roxas no longer holds my hand. I know that I’ll be left alone and soon enough the memories will fade, the scars will grow deeper, altering the shape of the bones underneath them, making the pain so bearable as if I was born with it. One day I feel I won’t hold this slow torture, but instead we keep tying the noose more to make it more unbearable, only sex being our only solitude, where we hold each other tight, fluids all over our legs and I don’t bother with anything. I know that soon enough I won’t taste him, soon enough he’ll have to answer to Hayner’s phone calls and all will go back the same for him. I don’t hold and throw the pasta plate against the wall, before I start crying, holding my head in my hands, as Roxas exists the living room, only to return with a towel, bandaids since I’ve managed to cut myself with a large shard on my arm.

But until he returns my whole body trembles.

This is how it will all feel. I’ll be alone. I’ll be alone. I’ll be alone. Refreshing the grid, taking photos, telling other guys advice I don’t follow online and maybe one day I won’t hold. Maybe one day I’ll have the courage to end it all, but for now, I have a desire. I want to see the end of the transition, I want to see how I’ll look like, how it won’t hold any stupid questions while I try to cruise. How I won’t be fetishized and how the end will really look without looking at the light with fingers shielding the sun. I won’t have anyone left, I’ll just be alone, sitting on the window sill, watching the neighbours do their laundry with their Buddha towels, cats fighting and my flat chest rising and a new weight between my legs. Maybe that’s worth living for.

But will love be there?

I keep crying.

Roxas holds me, once he bandages everything, knowing that I’ve been holding, we’ve both been holding all this time, we’ve been harvesting a ticking bomb, without knowing what would happen after the last petal of summer falls down. I can’t bring myself to break up something as easy as the pasta plate, something which never existed. We were never an item, we were just a summer fling, something to jerk off over and then to regret for the rest of our lives that we couldn’t pull ourselves together. That’s all. It will all be reduced and forgotten. I don’t know how much I have to dunk my head in water, let the drops run down my hair for me to understand:

that it’s over.

There is no point. Speaking. Asking. Trying. Pleading.

My pain only spreads, like the blood would’ve down my arm, if Roxas hadn’t tended it. I can’t stop bawling, it’s all gone. It’s just a matter of many hours now. It’ll be gone.

I don’t attend the first introductory lesson, as I woke up and saw Roxas dress up. I didn’t have acloset mirror to see his reflection, but his shoulders were shaking, but at the same time I could see him trying to stand straight. I knew that he’d be stepping into something he knew and I’d be the outcast, like last year where I struggled to go to the course’s dinner, arriving late and getting entry refused and it was prior to having my name changed. I ended up crying on the way back and hooking up the next morning, the guy fucked me harder and I couldn’t cum up to the point that I just left and I took a short walk back, to this same apartment and I curled up into a ball on the floor, feeling the pain become needles.

“I’m skipping the first lesson.” And Roxas sharply turns and looks at me in the face, as I cover my eyes with my arm, as if indicating that I want to sleep simply, even if we had spent the last two months together and now we were going to drift.

I could sense things stirring in Roxas’ brain, but he couldn’t voice them, instead I felt his weight on the bed and soon enough he crawled to my side and was on top of me.

I took my arm off and saw the tear traces under his eyes, but his eyes didn’t go puffy like my own and he remained emotionless, before initiating a harsh kiss between us and I couldn’t help but grasp onto him, still barely feeling my genitals from last night’s fucking. We kissed for a long while, before he stood up, let go. I could see the corridor from here and he held the keys in his hand for a while, it’s as if I could see a reflection of all the memories in every time he turned the keys from us walking back to my home. He looked up at me lost and put the keys on the counter. His hand hovered over them before he exited and closed the door shut.

Autumn came the next day for me, as I stepped on leaves which contradicted the weather and I could hear people complaining about schedules. I kept myself to myself. I didn’t know what other classes we would have together, since it was a different building to my usual. I had his phone number and I could see when he was online, I couldn’t dare myself to post anything on Instagram and I had been absent all this time when Roxas was over, I didn’t even talk to the usual people. It’s as if I had managed to figure out a bubble to hide into and

He had loved me

Even for a brief while

I believed that people loved people, even with expiration dates, but most just hid it well into their sleeve. But love never faded. I ignored the dinners, the fancy traditions and I just wore the outfits when I felt like it, but I remained quiet that I even felt like I had forgotten how my voice sounded, but I didn’t skip any of my shots.

I looked at myself in the mirror one of the days and I saw that I looked exactly like I had before I met Roxas and I wondered how long would it take for the love to become a memory, for it to stop shaping my bones, for it to become my breath and for it to be exhaled, just like any other memory. But I couldn’t bring myself to start doing things, I just wandered, I just walked and I slowly started studying without caring and paid my bills until I needed money and that’s when I started talking to others again, but it took a while until my path crossed with Roxas. His fingers were laced with Hayner, so it wasn’t like he stood outside of the statistics classroom with his head down, waiting for me, instead he was laughing with his friends and I was the one standing in front of the class, staring at him, before someone pushed past me and I went to my seat. I guess more people failed than I expected, so I sat down on the front row, some people saying how red my hair looked now, freshly dyed and I closed my eyes.

I couldn’t cry.

Midway I left, passing the bathroom with the phone in my hand, wondering how many had hooked up and left without a trace, besides the taste of cum in their mouth. Even that washes off.

It’s a matter of exhaling.


	8. Chapter 8

Some days are bad. Some days are worse. I couldn’t get myself to get friends, but people started talking once I started raising my hand and paying attention to class, even statistics, where I had Roxas and his blue eyes would land on mine. But when it came to group choosing he would always be in one with Hayner, it was as if the summer never existed. One night I woke up and I wondered how far, looking at my hands, my dreams stretched. How long the taste of Roxas would follow me, and how many guys fucking my guts out it would take to forget.

I started sleeping with other men since Roxas had a commitment privilege, but I could barely remember the faces later. I only registered how much hair they had and if I had clutched it as they had gone down on me. I would try to strike a conversation, but everyone seemed to be like a train which I wouldn’t be able to get on. I had no way to signal to the driver, until I looked around the train station and saw him.

Roxas.

I walked towards him.

He was standing under the statue in the University square and I approached him, not really knowing why. He looked up and I saw his confused blue eyes, but I didn’t dare to approach closer, so he had to do the final steps and that’s when we just stood, tourists taking enough photos that would see tips of my hair or Roxas’ baggy clothing. But we couldn’t say anything.

Eventually Roxas pulled the straps on his backpack and signalled me to follow him and I did, keeping my distance, him barely checking if I’ve been following and we ended up in a park where there were memorials to many things. I used to like to walk here alone before. I’m sure I had mentioned that to Roxas. But as soon as I looked up at the trees, he grabbed my chin and pulled me down, foreheads together, as if sharing the same memories all over with now the autumn falling trees in full motion, as Roxas was about to cry, but he didn’t do anything and neither did I. Sometimes lovers do nothing at all. We just stood there and moved away from every sound of a twig or a bird until I started kissing him, cupping his cheeks and he obliged, pulling me by my hair down and we made out, as if time had stopped for us, as if our bodies became immortal for a minute and nothing could harm us, but people walked, people biked, people ran and we just stood there kissing.

People would talk, people would raise hands and people would ask what’s bipolar.

I puked when I gotten home with Roxas, not understanding all the anxiety that I had held from not seeing him and crying, bent over the toilet, before Roxas tucked me into the bed as I was shaking and sleepy. Roxas held me and I felt love. I shifted every time closer to him when he would move, afraid to lose his warmth and the fragments of the love that manifested that day.

I woke up in the middle of the night, bed warm, so Roxas shouldn’t have left for long, but once I opened my eyes I saw the light in the bathroom. I sat up for a while and waited, wondering and eventually I opened the door, to see Roxas pressed against the shower cubicle door, flicking through his phone and his lashes wet. Roxas slept in his boxers only, while I had a baggy shirt. I sat besides him and put my head on his shoulder, quickly peeking on his phone which was opened on Hayner’s Instagram which contained the summer Roxas had missed. There were no other men which seemed to be a threat for Roxas, but his hands still shook and I closed my eyes, as he stroked my hair and head.

“Did he cheat too?” I asked quietly, Roxas flinching at the sound of my voice, as if he’s never heard me speak, as if I was an image or a dream where I couldn’t scream from pleasure or pain.

“No, he didn’t…” He kept his mouth open, wondering what else to do, but instead he closed it briefly afterwards and looked at me, as we sat leaning on opposite walls. Roxas seemed to want to speak, it’s so strange that when it comes to people you can find out about a person in the right hour or maybe it’ll take a lifetime to simply lose track of them until you’re on your deathbed and take away the last secret. Maybe you’ll whisper that you never loved at all. Crashing a person’s world just for them to build it again before they die themselves.

“He was faithful.” Roxas wrapped his arms around his legs and put his head on his knees, watching me with lost blue eyes.

“And you weren’t.” Roxas nodded and his lashes became wet again. “Does he know?”

Roxas shook his head, then shrugged. Quickly unlocking his phone and showing me worried texts from Hayner starting from the time I met Roxas at the statue, as if he had seen something or felt. Then he locked his phone again, but I still read them all, all the worries, all the confusion and all the concerned love.

“I don’t know how one cannot feel when you… feel something else.” Roxas said with a drying mouth. “He’s supposed to be in love, I’m supposed to be the vulnerable, open book. And I am! So why… why can’t he see?”

He looked at the mirror, which didn’t show our reflections because we were simply too low.

“Why should he guess something I’ve committed, though?” Roxas kept talking and I kept listening, not interrupting, even though I’ve seen him struggle with his infidelity and the one time I asked him why he wouldn’t open his relationship to sexual encounters, other partners, other guys and he would say that Hayner wouldn’t handle it. A lifetime felt like it had passed since I had tried to be in a threesome with Hayner and Roxas. The blonde closed his wet eyes again and kept them closed for a while, rocking from side to side until I pulled him in my lap and kissed his forehead.

He stood up.

“I should tell him.”

“What would you tell… when you’re not sure yourself, Roxas? The thoughts are just muddy waters in your mind.” I spoke out and Roxas just looked at his reflection, trying to find the answers and he stretched his hand for me to stand up and we headed back into the bedroom, under the covers and that’s when Roxas spoke again.

“I should at least tell what’s going on.”

“And what’s going on?”

Roxas turned towards me, under the covers, taking both my hands and placing them on his shoulders, letting them travel all over him.

“I love you.” He said clearly, as if sleep had vanished and nothing had happened at all, as if summer was back in full motion and we were suffering from anxiety of idleness. We curled up against each other and slept that way and I couldn’t recall anything in the dreams besides Roxas besides me and his even breathing, sometimes a soft snore which would cause me to shift.

I woke up earlier than he did and I would’ve cried if it wasn’t for the testosterone, so I just stared at the fridge, not brewing coffee until Roxas’ alarm rang and that caused me to start making breakfast for the both of us. My hands didn’t shake, I let Roxas kiss the back of my neck, raising my hair and kissing down my back a bit. We looked at each other and started our day, knowing that in the evening we might not even be ourselves, because every day is a separate life which adds to something, which may never make sense.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Stay safe!


	9. Chapter 9

The cold came suddenly and it felt like a repetition. I could see a nightmare, which had a chair where I was strapped to. I wasn’t blindfolded. There was a snowstorm, which was peculiar to where I came from, and my hair was even longer. I could see the round face, something feminine. Wearing a nightgown and carrying a stuffed cat, which was stolen from me, breaking all ties with childhood. The cat had my birth name… Because that’s a common name for cats.

Maybe that’s why I lost it.

I looked at the girl in the nightgown and in the snowstorm. Why was she there? She wasn’t me. She was me when I realized who I was… probably.

She walked closer to me and I couldn’t stop. I even managed to push the chair backwards and hit my head. I saw blood spilling onto the snow, my eyes blurring and a scream catching the hem of her nightgown as she sat besides me and watched me.

“You will never get rid of me.” She narrowed her eyes. She whispered my birth name and I spat blood at her, waking up to complete darkness and my breathing completely neurotic, the streetlights off due to some power failure, I guess. My whole bed stank of my own sweat. I covered my mouth with my hands, then my ears and I screamed, knees to my chest with no binder on. I heard some stomping from upstairs to keep it quiet, but I couldn’t stop.

 

I went into the kitchen.

I looked at my phone.

Missed calls.

Mom.

Dad.

I took a large knife, which Roxas had bought, and I wanted to stab myself. Instead I looked at my thighs, tracing the steel against my skin, barely touching it. I hated cutting.

They always invited me with disgust to holidays. They knew I would say no. I just hadn’t said no yet. That’s why they called.

That night I wanted to end my life. I opened the window wide open to the pitch-black street and stretched out my hand, as if trying to grasp snow, which would never come, the knife in the other hand. My breathing wouldn’t stop increasing, I was nearly suffocating.

I sat in the kitchen, looking at the knife, looking at my reflection.

How long would this go on?

I called Roxas, quickly taking a second chance to make sure I was offline on every app the family could catch me on. We started the affair again. The day was the same, only I had been scared, very scared.

I had received the letter approving my surgeries. That they would be scheduled.

It was a mixed day. It took a while to send them, because I kept feeling guilty about having sex with a now-enamoured Roxas. When he came, he grabbed my hand and lifted me off the ground, throwing the knife away and holding me close, as I would get even more hysterical with no tears forming. Roxas loved me. But why wasn’t that enough? I pushed him away, my breathing causing me to sit down. Roxas sat down next to me and watched carefully, stroking whatever I had allowed.

He wouldn’t break off with Hayner.

I knew that, and I never asked for it, now I had something with my breathing so I couldn’t even string sentences together. He saw my nails move up my arm and he held my wrists down as I yelled at him. He took me to bed and held me tight, telling me he would deal with Hayner in the morning.

The cold came. Nothing changed. He cheated on Hayner with me, I’d see him on the streets and he wouldn’t bat an eye in my direction. Maybe he forgot. I don’t know. It got even colder and I had started getting more missed calls from my family. I would never reject them, I would never turn off the phone, I would just let it ring into oblivion.

“You have privilege… you know?” I overheard once, barely lifting my head from the table. “You’re  white.”

I ended up jumping over the table, my thoughts hazy and I realized that the person I was chasing was Hayner. Was I in another dream?

“And you…” He pointed at me from head to toe, as we stood in the corridor.

I shook my head, feeling a shiver run down my spine. Lights off and flickering were often, since we kept getting storms.

“You’re not even on a visa. That’s the main privilege you have… Because if you stayed where you were, you would’ve died, you tranny.” And that’s when I jumped on him, pinning him down and punching him directly in the face, as Roxas tried to pull me off. I screamed at them both, at Roxas to fuck off and at Hayner that he was a despicable human being.

And I yelled it.

“Maybe if you were fucking nicer and a better shag, Roxas wouldn’t have found a better hole to fuck!” Roxas took his hands off me and Hayner managed to summon all his strength and he pushed me to the floor. Now he was on top.

“At least I’m not some lousy lover who can’t make it into a boyfriend… ever.” He takes me by the collar. “I know. I know. I fucking know! But at the end of the day… you’ll never get married, you’ll never ever… be able to get erect. A fucking dildo for a living… Why don’t you just get a straight guy… Straight guys would pound your vagina better.”

Roxas now took Hayner off me and held his arms, as he kept shouting obscenities towards me. I managed to keep punching him and Roxas turned his face away. Hayner started pleading for me to stop, as I noticed that a tooth was noew missing, he smiled at me when I stopped.

“Tranny. A paper doesn’t make a man. A penis does.”

Roxas dropped him. Hayner laid there unconscious from the contact with the floor. We watched him bleed and I was pushed aside, as people came rushing in and out of classrooms, blood spilling onto books, as if the fight was still on going.

I screamed when I got back home.

Roxas didn’t follow me. When they took Hayner away, he was gone already.

I heard the same banging from the ceiling and I screamed louder until I got tired.

I slept with the snow, the open window and the bed sheets off me, sweat still forming as I opened my eyes to the girl standing besides me. She watched me as I went into the kitchen and I came back to stab her.

She bled through her dress and between her legs, something I didn’t have for years. I turned around and slept, hearing the phone ring hour after hour. I was lucid? I don’t know.

I ended up seeing my psychiatrist who asked me to explain everything and file a report of a hate crime, which made me shake. Roxas went back to his parents for a week. I stayed home and paced around the house. I was going crazy.

One night I picked up the phone and I heard an older voice of my mother screaming sentences, but I just did a screech and dropped the call, throwing my phone away. I started to grab a new knife, smaller and I thought of Roxas, who just told me he needed time alone.

I looked at the blade.

 

I was tired. I threw it in the sink. I never built a family, the pain just grew. I never made friends. The pain just grew. I stopped hooking up regularly. The pain grew. The pain. Pain, it made me claw my neck in my sleep when I saw the girl again. She was what my parents wanted.

They wanted me in a coffin and I didn’t want to give them that joy. I wanted to murder that girl, no matter how long it would take for her to bleed as I watched her every night. Pills, pills and pills now. I punched the wall, as she bled and grinned.

“Just like your father… Just like your father.” I kicked her.

“Axel?”

I looked at my psychiatrist and recalled his question.

“Yes, I experience hallucinations. Loss of time. Whatever.” And medicine was given.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I haven't been well, so all words of encouragement and kudos are appreciated. 
> 
> Thank you!

**Author's Note:**

> I needed to put all my mania somewhere and I had always focused on the depression side of my bipolar disorder, so I've been suffering through a pretty bad mania episode and this is what I decided to soothe myself with and just show what mania really is, loneliness, dysphoria, solitude and isolation. 
> 
> I hope you enjoyed it and I've been dying to have a new AkuRoku to write and love! 
> 
> For my other work, and to know why I use AO3, see here: https://graspthesanity.wordpress.com/2019/06/09/why-i-use-ao3/


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